Throw a copy of SpringMapConvNG on Itch.io

Do SpringBoard instead. Why upload a small and annoying part of the mapping tool chain if you can instead upload something that can make a map from scratch and deliver it to your doorstep?

Also, what is "the Zero-K postprocessor"?

As far as I'm aware there is no version of Spring Board that is appropriate for end users. For a piece of mapping software to be suitable for public release it needs to do everything. You have to be able to download it, launch it, mess around with some tools and paintbrushes, then click a button to export the map.

Spring Board seems to be the closest thing to a complete map making program. Just put the final bits of work in required to make it friendly (as opposed to part of a toolchain) if you are going to put it out in the wild. For now the best thing that other people can do is heavily document the map making process on the wiki.

This page is inadequate: http://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Map_Creation

Do these instructions gajop wrote still work? https://github.com/Spring-SpringBoard/SpringBoard-ZK

I used it to download Springboard but I have no idea to run it. Maybe it doesn't download springboard itself and just the Zero-K modules for springboard. The Springboard app image I did also download had no reference to anything Zero-K specific afterwards. I think I am missing a few steps.

Please don't upload SB anywhere. Just use the launcher links I provided on the GH repo(s)

I recommend waiting until I announce a release (maybe this year, I'm pretty busy).

quote: Other than SpringMapConvNG, what parts of the tool chain are needed to make a Zero-K map?

Here's the toolchain i used in the one hour map video (and also for Glacies, Coagulation), with some alternatives i know were used by other mappers.

1: Blender to do terrain sculpting and texture auto generation (or use springboard with manual texture painting)
- OR any other heightmap/terrain editing/generation tool e.g. Gaia, Carrara, WICed, L3DT, Bryce, etc. Most of them are proprietary, sometimes very ($100+ license cost). Blender requires quite some expertise to set up for map editing, and my experiments with the ANT plugin were quite abortive.

2: Gimp to do flat image post-processing (ex: DNTS) if necessary (or use springboard)

3: SpringMapConvNG to compile the map (alterantives: any other mapconv; or use springboard) <--- you are here

4: SpringBoard for precision tuning of your heightmap (fixing slope angles and water depths in particular; alternative: lots of fiddling with your heightmap tool, e.g. blender)

5: SpringBoard for feature placement (alternative: write a placement config by hand in text editor)

6: Zero-K to easily generate startbox configurations (which would be part of SB:ZK when such a thing is done)

7: A text editor of any kind to save startbox and metal configurations (which should be automatically done by SB:ZK when such a thing is done)

8: An archive manager capable of producing non-solid 7z or zip files

Steps 1-5 and 8 are doable in SpringBoard currently or are SpringBoard.

I don't see any reason to distribute SpringMapConvNG in that light.

The minimum requirements are an image editor, text editor, compiler, archiver.

This leaves you to paint the heightmap as a black-and-white image, and place features and startboxes by manually writing a config file, but some well-known maps were done in this way.

quote: Why is the spring map compiler not part of the spring run time environment now if spring maps can't be made without of it? Is it for code cleanliness?

As far as i can gather, that's just an accident of the respective projects' evolution.

Consider: there is not - and afaik there never was - a project officially named "The Spring Map Compiler". Instead, there's "mapconv", "Mother's mapconv", "Beherith's mapconv", "Pymapconv", "SpringMapConvNG", "smf_tools", the built-in-java compiler provided by SpringMapEdit, etc.

Much the same reason why Spring requires an external lobby program to play multiplayer games, but no single lobby is part of the engine (even if SpringLobby is maintained by Spring devs).

I think (probably) the first compiler(s) and the lobby(ies) were written by people who were not directly engine devs at that point: as separate but adjacent projects; and that's the way it mostly stayed until now.

The only move i know of that attempted to integrate the compiler into the engine proper was made as part of an attempt to integrate a compiler into SpringBoard (which ended up being solved by packaging the separate binary instead)

This is what I think blocks the next SB release: https://github.com/Spring-SpringBoard/SpringBoard-Core/milestone/7